banner
LightNews
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova
@mariapopova.bsky.social
9.1K followers 21 following 2.7K posts
Creator of The Marginalian (once upon a time called Brain Pickings). Lover of books and tress. Petter of moss. Wonderer. Also: almanacofbirds.org
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Pinned
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · Apr 19
In nearly two decades of The Marginalian, nothing has stirred a more passionate response from readers than the strangest, most sidewise, most private of my labors — the bird divinations I shared the morning of my fortieth birthday. They are now a book of cards:
An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days
In nearly two decades of The Marginalian, nothing has stirred a more passionate response from readers than the strangest, most sidewise, most private of my labors — the bird divinations I ori…
www.themarginalian.org
7 21 140
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 3h
“The transformation of the heart is a wondrous thing, no matter how you land there.”

Patti Smith on love, loss, time, and transformation www.themarginalian.org/2015/10/19/p...
Patti Smith on Time, Transformation, and How the Radiance of Love Redeems the Rupture of Loss
“The transformation of the heart is a wondrous thing, no matter how you land there.”
www.themarginalian.org
5 13
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 4h
Steinbeck and the difficult art of the friend breakup www.themarginalian.org/2016/03/18/j...
Steinbeck and the Difficult Art of the Friend Breakup
“I can’t consider you a friend when out of every contact there comes some intentionally wounding thing.”
www.themarginalian.org
1 10
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 6h
Emily Dickinson's stunning ode to resilience, animated www.themarginalian.org/2018/09/18/w...
We Grow Accustomed to the Dark: Emily Dickinson’s Stunning Ode to Resilience, Animated
A timeless serenade to finding light amid the “Evenings of the Brain.”
www.themarginalian.org
7 14
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 13h
Orcas and the price of consciousness – lessons in love and loss from Earth's most successful predator www.themarginalian.org/2025/08/21/o...
Orcas and the Price of Consciousness: Lessons in Love and Loss from Earth’s Most Successful and Creative Predator
Marbling the waters of every ocean with their billows of black and white, orcas are Earth’s most creative and most successful apex predator. Although they are known as killer whales, they are…
www.themarginalian.org
3 14
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 16h
How to see more clearly and love more purely – an Iris Murdoch gem www.themarginalian.org/2024/08/05/i...
How to See More Clearly and Love More Purely: Iris Murdoch on the Angst of Not Knowing Ourselves and Each Other
One of the hardest things to learn in life is that the heart is a clock too fast not to break. We lurch into loving, only to discover again and again that it takes a long time to know people, to un…
www.themarginalian.org
4 10
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 18h
Dawn – a watercolor ode to the primeval conversation between our living planet and its dying star www.themarginalian.org/2025/08/14/d...
Dawn: A Watercolor Ode to the Primeval Conversation Between Our Living Planet and Its Dying Star
“You have found an intermediate space… where the passing moment lingers, and becomes truly the present,” Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote in his transcendent portrait of the transition f…
www.themarginalian.org
1 11
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 18h
How not to be a victim of success www.themarginalian.org/2025/10/09/r...
How Not to Be a Victim of Success
A self is a personal mythos — a story through which we sieve the complexity and condradictions of lived experience for coherence. The cruelest price of success — that affirmation of the…
www.themarginalian.org
1 8
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 21h
The great humanistic philosopher and psychologist Erich Fromm on love, the roadblocks we put in our own path to it, and how to surmount them www.themarginalian.org/2015/10/29/t...
1 6
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 23h
The forgotten visionary Jane Ellen Harrison on change, the meaning of faith for a non-religious person, and the courage of heresy www.themarginalian.org/2025/09/05/j...
By Contacts We Are Saved: The Forgotten Visionary Jane Ellen Harrison on Change, the Meaning of Faith, and the Courage of Heresy
Alpha and Omega, originally published in 1915, is the third title in Marginalian Editions. Below is my foreword to the new edition, as it appears in on its pages. “Have faith,” someone I loved said…
www.themarginalian.org
1 7
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
“making your unknown known… and keeping the unknown always beyond you.”

Georgia O'Keeffe's advice on being an artist www.themarginalian.org/2014/12/08/g...
Georgia O’Keeffe on Success, Public Opinion, and What It Means to Be an Artist, in a Letter to Sherwood Anderson
“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant—there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing—and keeping the unknown always beyond you…”
www.themarginalian.org
5
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
How to be more alive – artist and philosopher Rockwell Kent on breaking the trance of near-living www.themarginalian.org/2025/04/06/r...
How to Be More Alive: Artist and Philosopher Rockwell Kent on Breaking the Trance of Near-living
The point, of course, is to make yourself alive — to feel the force of being in your sinew and your spirit, to tremble with the beauty and the terror of it all, to breathe lungfuls of life th…
www.themarginalian.org
1 1 10
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
The science of stress and how our emotions affect our susceptibility to burnout and disease www.themarginalian.org/2015/07/20/e...
9
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
"And it is all so simple... You will suddenly learn how to live."

The day Dostoyevsky discovered the meaning of life in a dream: www.themarginalian.org/2014/11/11/d...
1 11
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
Carnival as culture – Brian Eno on saving civilization from itself www.themarginalian.org/2025/08/20/b...
1 2 9
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
30 years ago, the poetic neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote brilliantly about so many of the questions we're reckoning with in the age of ChatGPT – questions of consciousness, AI, and our search for meaning www.themarginalian.org/2023/05/02/o...
4 19
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
"I long to read more in the book of you."

Beloved Moomins creator Tove Jansson's almost unbearably beautiful love letters to the love of her life (who inspired her wisest Moomin character) www.themarginalian.org/2020/06/12/t...
I Long to Read More in the Book of You: Moomins Creator Tove Jansson’s Tender and Passionate Letters to the Love of Her Life
“I’m so unused to being happy that I haven’t really come to terms with what it involves… I feel like a garden that’s finally been watered, so my flowers can bloom.”
www.themarginalian.org
10 30
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
Joy — like music, like love — is one of those entirely unnecessary miracles of consciousness that give meaning to survival with its bright allegiance to the most alive part of us www.themarginalian.org/2025/07/04/m...
1 3 21
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
This long-ago gem is so timely: Erich Fromm on moral aloneness, the paradox of freedom, and our mightiest antidote to terror www.themarginalian.org/2018/04/17/e...
The Paradox of Freedom: The Great Humanistic Philosopher and Psychologist Erich Fromm on Moral Aloneness and Our Mightiest Antidote to Terror
“Modern man still is anxious and tempted to surrender his freedom to dictators of all kinds, or to lose it by transforming himself into a small cog in the machine.”
www.themarginalian.org
3 12
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 1d
Hermann Hesse on the single most important habit for living with presence www.themarginalian.org/2017/03/06/h...
Hermann Hesse on Little Joys, Breaking the Trance of Busyness, and the Most Important Habit for Living with Presence
“The high value put upon every minute of time, the idea of hurry-hurry as the most important objective of living, is unquestionably the most dangerous enemy of joy.”
www.themarginalian.org
1 12
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 2d
Be Like Water – the philosophy and origin of Bruce Lee's famous metaphor for resilience www.themarginalian.org/2013/05/29/l...
Be Like Water: The Philosophy and Origin of Bruce Lee’s Famous Metaphor for Resilience
“In order to control myself I must first accept myself by going with and not against my nature.”
www.themarginalian.org
5 16
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 2d
Oliver Sacks on despair and the meaning of life www.themarginalian.org/2024/11/08/o...
1 7
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 2d
Decoding the mysteries of intuition – philosopher Margaret Boden (who was one of the first thinkers to reckon with AI at the dawn of social computing) on the 3 elements of creativity www.themarginalian.org/2025/08/22/m...
Decoding the Mystery of Intuition: Pioneering Philosopher of AI Margaret Boden on the Three Elements of Creativity
“The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate anything. It can do [only] whatever we know how to order it to perform,” Ada Lovelace inveighed upon composing the world&…
www.themarginalian.org
4
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 2d
“We are cheating ourselves when we run away from the ambiguity of loneliness.”

Buddhist teacher Pema Chödrön on how to bear your loneliness www.themarginalian.org/2023/03/11/p...
6
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 2d
Nietzsche on walking and creativity www.themarginalian.org/2021/12/12/n...
4
mariapopova.bsky.social
Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 2d
An illustrated love letter to language, tucked into a delightful fable about the difficult question of how to be yourself www.themarginalian.org/2024/11/15/t...
The Dictionary Story: A Love Letter to Language Tucked Into a Delightful Fable about the Difficult Question of How to Be Yourself
“Words belong to each other,” Virginia Woolf rasped in the only surviving recording of her voice — a love letter to language as an instrument of thought and a medium of being. …
www.themarginalian.org
5 20